Kristen Miller
Kristen studied BBB in the College. She is currently a medical student at the University of New England and sees herself working in pediatrics or orthopedics. In the meantime though, Kristen wanted to understand the brain—bird and human—and the circuitry behind why we are the way we are. You could find her either in the lab cutting open little bird brains to take a peak inside, or out on the soccer field as a committed student athlete. In both of these worlds, she explored the complexities of brain and mind and she’ll let you know when she stumbles upon something great.
Collyn Messier
Collyn joined the lab in 2016 as a research technician/ lab manager. He loves birds, and probably knows more about wild bird behavior than anyone in the lab. Collyn was enrolled in a post-baccalaureate here at Penn and hoped to make the move to graduate school in a few years. He was most interested in studying complex social behaviors and how females evaluate male song and use it to determine male quality. When not in lab Collyn can be found listening to weird and interesting podcasts, playing board games or engaging in a variety of outdoorsy activities such as: hiking, kayaking, and bird-watching.
Jakub Jarmula
From the suburbs of Chicago, Jakub Jarmula majored in Biology with a Concentration in Neurobiology. he hopes to pursue a career in medicine, and is currently attending the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. He enjoys watching hockey, playing tennis, exploring Philadelphia, and cooking.
Jessie Burke
Jessie was a BBB major who always had a passion for birds, brains, and now bird brains. She is particularly interested in language and cognition and thinks bird communication might help us understand our own. She spent the summer of 2016 working in Dr. Elissa Newport’s language acquisition lab at Georgetown University. Jessie is attending grad school at Columbia University after enjoying the scattered freedom of her undergrad years. In addition to majoring in BBB, she also had a minor in South Asian Studies focusing on Hindi-Urdu and South Asian literature.
Ian Jean
Ian was a member of the class of 2019 pursuing majors in BBB and Philosophy. He is interested in a career in medical research. He comes from Indiana, and is fluent in Korean and English. He is a violinist of 11 years and can identify the composers of most classical pieces. At the lab, he is interested in using carbon-fiber electrode arrays for higher resolution neural recording.
Courteney Ly
Hailing from the faraway lands of the Philadelphia suburbs, Courteney studied Neurobiology, and is currently attending the Rutgers Medical School. Since she was a small girl, Courteney was always interested in neuroanatomy and physiology, and learned more about avian circuitry and behavior through working in the lab. When not playing with songbirds in the lab, you could find Courteney playing one of various instruments, or singing with her a cappella group — in fact, she secretly thinks she may be a songbird herself — quite the identity crisis.
Zach Sheldon
Zach hails from a small town in the mediocre state of New Jersey. This spunky Cognitive Science major, aimed to work at the intersection of neuroscience and computer science after graduation, and is current a data scientist at PwC. Zach hoped to bring new meaning to the term ‘bird-brained’ with his project on the acoustic effects of perturbation of viscerosensory feedback in zebra finches. He was also the current College House Research Fellow for Sansom West in his rising Junior Summer. Outside of the lab, he was the Sports Photo Editor for The Daily Pennsylvanian and the chair of the YouToo Tennis Program for Penn Speaks for Autism.
Ammon Perkes
Ammon (rhymes with “examine“) was a PhD candidate in the Biology Department. He is interested in the role of the song system in female mating behavior. He hopes to develop new techniques to bring computational power to the study of behavior. At the risk of being a jack-of-all-trades, Ammon feels that the integration of diverse fields will provide new and exciting insights into life. When he isn’t in the lab, Ammon can be found rock climbing, watching Doctor Who, hanging out with his amazing wife, or all three at once. He intends to become a professor, and is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UC Davis.
Luke Anderson
Luke was a PhD student in Biology. Prior to arriving at Penn, he spent two years as a high school teacher in New Orleans, where he cultivated his love of both biology and teaching. He hopes to use the cowbird system to pursue questions at the intersection of animal behavior and evolutionary ecology. Outside the lab he is an avid musician, moonlighting as a bassist and guitarist in various bands around the city. Find him on Spotify.
Judith McLean
Dr. Judith McLean has been associated with Penn for 40 years, as an undergraduate BBB major, a graduate student, a senior research investigator, and as a lecturer and lab instructor for the BBB program, the School of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Medicine. Dr. McLean was born in Northern Ireland but spent most of her youth in a Philadelphia suburb and entered Penn to become a BBB major in the second year of the program. She received her PhD in Anatomy at Penn in the laboratory of Dr. Larry Palmer, investigating the contribution of linear mechanisms to the velocity selectivity of simple cells in primary visual cortex. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Barry Waterhouse at Hahnemann University, where she investigated how norepinephrine could modulate neuronal responses to moving visual stimuli, she returned to Penn and has studied plasticity in the adult primary visual cortex (with Dr. Larry Palmer), efficiency of information transmission by retinal ganglion cells (with Dr. Peter Sterling), and most recently the neural circuits involved with breathing and vocal control in the songbird (with Dr. Marc Schmidt).